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3232fireworxdigital/Vadphttps://feedburner.google.comThese AdWords Excuses Might Be Holding Your Business Backhttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/fireworxdigital/Vadp/~3/vsCMdb7B0fE/
http://fireworxdigital.com/adwords-excuses-holding-business-back/#respondFri, 09 Mar 2018 00:18:49 +0000http://fireworxdigital.com/?p=393Believe it or not, Pay-Per-Click advertising is one of the best marketing investments you can make today. Consumers go to Google when they want to know, go, do, or buy something. That means, when leveraged correctly, your business, product, or service can appear before the eyes of a consumer who is itching to convert. However, … Continue reading "These AdWords Excuses Might Be Holding Your Business Back"

]]>Believe it or not, Pay-Per-Click advertising is one of the best marketing investments you can make today. Consumers go to Google when they want to know, go, do, or buy something. That means, when leveraged correctly, your business, product, or service can appear before the eyes of a consumer who is itching to convert. However, many businesses still aren’t taking advantage of Google AdWords.

Here are four common excuses we hear from those who aren’t making this marketing investment:

“Google AdWords is too expensive.”

“I have an SEO campaign.”

Not only can you see the benefits of AdWords more quickly than SEO alone, but AdWords visitors are 50% more likely to purchase something than organic visitors. AdWords campaigns compliment SEO very well and can even help you dominate all search results above the fold.

“No one clicks those.”

Actually, they do. Over 45% of people couldn’t identify paid ads on the search results page and the top 3 sponsored spots get 41% of the clicks on the first page of search results.

It's time to put your money where their search is. -@PaulMcQuadeOCClick To Tweet

“I already tried it, it didn’t work.”

When done well, an AdWords campaign can be highly effective. First, assess things like your ad copy, the landing page your prospect is taken to, keyword categories and negative keywords lists. Then, make the necessary adjustments to help your campaign run more effectively.

In the end, Google AdWords is one of the best tools for lead generation—one where you can see fast, measurable results. 80% of search results now yield Google ads. And these ads take up 85% of the space above the fold. That means it’s time to stop making excuses.

]]>http://fireworxdigital.com/adwords-excuses-holding-business-back/feed/0http://fireworxdigital.com/adwords-excuses-holding-business-back/Get Your Goals Back on Track: Here’s Howhttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/fireworxdigital/Vadp/~3/o6UPqjm43Tc/
http://fireworxdigital.com/achieve-2018-goals/#respondThu, 08 Feb 2018 19:34:39 +0000http://fireworxdigital.com/?p=389It happens every year. Well, at least for 92% of us it does. You take the time to make a list of goals and resolutions for the new year ahead. You care about your business and you want to see it grow and thrive. But as days turn into weeks, before you know it an … Continue reading "Get Your Goals Back on Track: Here’s How"

You take the time to make a list of goals and resolutions for the new year ahead. You care about your business and you want to see it grow and thrive. But as days turn into weeks, before you know it an entire month has flown by and you haven’t taken one actionable step towards your big goal…oh, and all of us are already back to eating carbs again.

Better luck next year, right?

Wrong. This is 2018. Twenty-GREAT-teen if you will. (Still on the fence about that one, but we’re goin’ with it for now.)

But more seriously, we get it. Life never slows down. You’re trying to keep your business running smoothly, and new goals and objectives inevitably take the back seat to the needs of your clients, making sure payroll goes out, bringing in new business, and the dozens of other tasks that have to be done each day. But you made those goals for a reason, and it’s not too late to get back on track and make them happen!

So while only about 8% of people typically keep their New Year’s Resolutions, with a few focused steps and a little motivation, we’re confident that we can easily boost that stat and be well on our way to our best year yet.

Revisit your goals

The first step towards accomplishing your business goals is the easiest one: just look at them again! So, open up that document from your New Year vision session. Bring out the notebook where you jotted down your late night hopes for your business this year. Take a moment to look at the goals that you set at the beginning of the year, and watch your motivation to make them happen reignite.

As you look at your goals, re-evaluate them using one very important filter: making sure your goals are SMART—specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time-bound.

“The only thing worse than starting something and failing… is not starting something.”– Seth Godin

Take action: What are your SMART 2018 business goals?

Make your task list

“Increase revenue by 20%,” won’t get you very far without an actionable task list to help you get there. A task list takes one large, year-long goal and makes it attainable and realistic. Each item on that list is a tiny obstacle that must be overcome in order to achieve the larger goal, and checking items off a list is as rewarding as it is motivating. If this seems overwhelming at first, break up the journey to your goal into milestones. Then create your task lists to allow you to hit each milestone with ease and prioritize those tasks in an efficient way.

“I can give you a six-word formula for success: Think things through–then follow through.” —Edward Rickenbacker, World War I fighter ace

Take action: What steps are necessary to accomplish each of your goals?

Set deadlines

Tasks are just a list of things you want to eventually do unless you set deadlines for each item on the list. Take the task list you just wrote and set realistic deadlines for each item. Making these items time-bound is especially important if you consider yourself a procrastinator. If there’s no deadline, it probably won’t happen.

“Productivity is never an accident. It is always the result of a commitment to excellence, intelligent planning, and focused effort.” – Paul J. Meyer

Take action: What date do you need to finish each task and milestone in order to accomplish your goal by the end of 2018?

Ask for help

We all have our strengths and weaknesses. Often, we allow our limitations to prevent us from achieving our goals. The truth is, not everyone can do everything. There are times we must get some help with checking the tasks off the list. Whether it’s an employee that you can delegate items to, or a 3rd party agency you can hire to take care of items outside of your skill or knowledge-base, make sure you are playing to your strengths and delegating when necessary.

“I knew that if I failed I wouldn’t regret that, but I knew the one thing I might regret is not trying.”-Jeff Bezos

Take action: What are the items on your list that you’ll need help accomplishing? Who can help you do them?

Make it happen

Sometimes we allow fear, time limitations, or just general lack of focus or motivation keep us from doing what we want and need to do. There comes a point where we just need to do it. We can plan and dream and prepare, but none of it will happen if we don’t make it happen.

“The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.”– Walt Disney

Take action: What have you allowed to hold you back from accomplishing your goals in the past? How can you make sure that doesn’t get in the way this year?

]]>http://fireworxdigital.com/achieve-2018-goals/feed/0http://fireworxdigital.com/achieve-2018-goals/The Top 5 Blog Moments of the Month from Seth Godinhttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/fireworxdigital/Vadp/~3/Hdwb9V3RriM/
http://fireworxdigital.com/seth-godin-blog-highlights/#respondWed, 20 Sep 2017 21:54:40 +0000http://fireworxdigital.com/?p=372Seth Godin hits “publish” on a blog post every. single. day. And it’s all, well, just really, really good. So, let’s take a break from envying his diligence or his focus or his team or whatever it is that keeps that content flowing and appreciate the top five moments from the last month. 1. “Airbrushing” … Continue reading "The Top 5 Blog Moments of the Month from Seth Godin"

]]>Seth Godin hits “publish” on a blog post every. single. day. And it’s all, well, just really, really good. So, let’s take a break from envying his diligence or his focus or his team or whatever it is that keeps that content flowing and appreciate the top five moments from the last month.

1. “Airbrushing”

“‘Compared to what?’ is not always a great question. It might be better to merely say, “this is pretty good.”

It’s widely understood these days that everything is airbrushed, touched up, or “photoshopped.” So much so, that when something isn’t, it gets recognized and celebrated.

A constant stream of other people’s airbrushed lives and advertiser’s airbrushed marketing ploys definitely takes its toll and if you’re not careful, “you’ll come to believe that you’re the only one with a less-than-perfect situation.”

]]>http://fireworxdigital.com/seth-godin-blog-highlights/feed/0http://fireworxdigital.com/seth-godin-blog-highlights/Why Your Audience Can’t Sit Still, and What You Can Do About Ithttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/fireworxdigital/Vadp/~3/U5avlHGhbfY/
Tue, 19 Sep 2017 23:04:10 +0000http://fireworxdigital.com/?p=377Should we really be comparing ourselves to goldfish? In 2015, Microsoft Canada released a study on people’s apparent shrinking attention spans. The study showed that due to technological advances, the average individual’s attention span was down from 12 seconds in the year 2000 to 8 seconds —one second shorter than the attention span of your … Continue reading "Why Your Audience Can’t Sit Still, and What You Can Do About It"

In 2015, Microsoft Canada released a study on people’s apparent shrinking attention spans. The study showed that due to technological advances, the average individual’s attention span was down from 12 seconds in the year 2000 to 8 seconds —one second shorter than the attention span of your average goldfish.

Noise.

I’m sure you’ve heard that statistic before, along with the goldfish reference. But what are the ramifications of that? Has this research on lack of attention span largely become an excuse for poor marketing?

We all end up playing the content marketing game, because, Content is King after all. Don’t get me wrong, we’re huge advocates of content marketing, we wouldn’t be writing this blog if we weren’t. But when that content marketing becomes about pushing out a huge quantity, or trying to be louder or more flashy in hopes of simply getting noticed, it often ends up aimlessly adding to the noise.

We’ve been told we have to capture their attention in several seconds so we throw everything against the wall and hope something sticks.

With a constant stream of noise and excitement jumping up and down for your customer’s attention, how do you get them to focus on you, your service, or your product? And then if you do get their attention on you, how do you hold onto it until they take action, or ‘convert’?

But wait, there’s more

There are differing opinions, though, that believe a shrinking attention span might not necessarily be the problem.

(Although it still is a problem.)

The issue of attention span, it seems, might actually just be a growing number of options to choose from. It makes sense, doesn’t it?

Take this, for example. It’s Friday night in the year 2000 and it’s time for your family to choose a movie for movie night. What do you do? You jump in the car and head to the local Blockbuster to see what they have. You take into account what’s age appropriate for your children, what you haven’t seen yet, and what’s left on the shelves and eventually a decision is made.

Fast forward to 2017 and the options are basically endless: Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, Vudu, HBO GO. They all have streaming options, not to mention that you can rent almost any movie on Apple Movies. Where do you even begin? How do you make a decision? Sometimes it seems like we take longer to choose a movie than the length of the movie itself!

Endless options and access creates new challenges and opportunities for marketing today.

It’s about accuracy and simplicity

It’s about getting your product in front of those who will find it useful, whose attention will be grabbed by it, whose focus will stay on it. It’s about reaching those who will find what you have to offer valuable.

(If you want to learn more about this, you can download our free ebook here.)

Once you have reached this audience, it’s your job to not let them slip away. One of the most common reasons your prospect doesn’t convert, is because you’ve distracted them with too many options. Think about the one thing you want your customer to do at the moment they’ve found you, and focus on that.

Moral of the story?

Whether our attention span is actually shrinking or we’re just overwhelmed with options, we can say these things for sure. Know your audience. Don’t make the mistake of distracting them with multiple goals, calls to action, or other products or services you think they might need down the road. Take a focused approach, cut through the noise and effectively grab your audience’s attention.

]]>http://fireworxdigital.com/audience-cant-sit-still/12 Tools Our Agency Can’t Live Withouthttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/fireworxdigital/Vadp/~3/HLERvClhKUU/
http://fireworxdigital.com/12-agency-tools/#respondSun, 25 Jun 2017 21:15:04 +0000http://fireworxdigital.com/?p=276Like many of you, we have had our share of trial and error experiences in gathering and implementing the perfect toolbox for our everyday tasks. And, full disclosure, I tend to be a bit of a shiny metal object guy when it comes to technology, productivity apps and awesome user interfaces. But while we have … Continue reading "12 Tools Our Agency Can’t Live Without"

]]>Like many of you, we have had our share of trial and error experiences in gathering and implementing the perfect toolbox for our everyday tasks. And, full disclosure, I tend to be a bit of a shiny metal object guy when it comes to technology, productivity apps and awesome user interfaces. But while we have many apps and solutions in our arsenal of options, there are some tools that have become our favorite standards that our team uses on a daily basis.

Below is a list of our top go-to tools.

1Password

I’ve always said passwords are the bane of my existence. Having to think them up, figure out how to remember them, remember where I wrote them down, and worry about some hacker out there accessing my data because I used a weak password…I’m sure you all can relate. But 1Password has made them a bit more tolerable.

We use 1Password for Teams which allows us to set passwords and share them with each other within “vaults”. We have vaults for our development, marketing, and general office teams, in addition to our individual private vaults for passwords not shared with others. The password generator is easy to use and fills in the blanks automatically and then stores the password for future access. It’s a great timesaving tool that we use a lot every single day..

Autopilot HQ

One of the most important aspects of our business, and what we teach all of our clients, is how to properly identify and set up customer journeys. Autopilot HQ makes this incredibly easy, with a user-friendly interface, and drag and drop functionality to connect each piece of the puzzle.

From capturing leads on your site through a heads-up display to adding appropriate delays between each optimized email, you can engage your contacts at the right time with just the right content. You can also connect Autopilot to Salesforce, Slack, Zapier and more to get a more complete view of all your contacts, map custom fields with CRM to see the actions those contacts take in real time, and then most importantly, track the data on everything.

It’s been a great tool to help us visualize our various journeys and connect the dots on many different pieces of our business!

Dropbox and Box

One aspect of our business that seems to be under constant refinement, is file management and storage. While there’s always room for improvement as existing tools are updated and new tools are released, this system has been working for us most recently.

We use Dropbox for sharing most files on a day-to-day basis. Our team shares folders set up for clients and projects and we can easily share links to those outside our team, making it really convenient as our primary folder system.

We primarily use Box to archive all our projects and client access folders. When we finalize a project, we upload all of the working design files to our own archive folder, and also set up a client shared folder. We invite the client to their download-only access folder so they can reach their files any time into the future, while giving everyone peace of mind that files cannot be removed or changed, especially on accident or without full consent.

Evernote

We use Evernote all day every day. If in doubt it goes into Evernote. I am still amazed at what I easily find in Evernote that I’ve stored over the years while searching through it. Things I long ago forgot about are still ready to call up at a moment’s notice. Web clippings, code snippets, images, articles, travel receipts, various scans we’ve uploaded from SnapScan S1500, also an indispensable tool, and so much more are all stored in notebooks, tagged and shared with our team. Suffice it to say, this is an app our team can’t live without.

Google Docs

I must admit I was a late convert to Google Docs. But after years of struggling with multiple and confusing versions of Microsoft Word and Apple Pages documents, with incompatibility issues to boot, we made the switch. And the primary reason was collaboration. It’s truly liberating to be able to real time collaborate on a doc while on a video conference call. It’s incredibly efficient as we work together on proposals, presentation notes, and a variety of project deliverables.

We most often use “suggesting” rather than “editing” mode when giving feedback on a doc that one of our team members produces. We also love the commenting capabilities, allowing us to literally turn the doc into a conversation about a certain topic.

I personally still like moving the final text into a Pages document for my favorite document formatting templates. Proposals and many client facing reports still make their way back to Pages for final export to PDF.

iAnnotate

This PDF annotation app is our go-to for communicating changes to our design team. It makes it really easy to mark up a print document or web page in minutes. I especially love using iAnnotate on my iPad Pro with Apple Pencil. It’s a breeze to just hand draw circles, arrows and underlines in red, type the text changes using the keyboard and then simply re-upload the doc to Teamwork for final design changes. It’s fast and efficient.

Keynote

As a lifelong Mac devotee, I personally have embraced all of Apple’s native apps, including Keynote. While I continue to be disappointed with the lack of compatibility between Keynote and PowerPoint, there are reasons we are committed to this elegant presentation software. Its usefulness goes way beyond presentations, although I’ve found it much easier to present highly professional, beautiful presentations in Keynote over PowerPoint over the past 10 years.

One major reason I love it is how easy it is to mock up a UI concept in Keynote. Rather than getting lost in layers and the technical aspects of Photoshop, we can breeze through ideas with each other even in real-time collaboration in Keynote, often bouncing in and out of Illustrator or Photoshop into Keynote slides where we can continue to experiment and communicate visually with each other. I used to be slightly embarrassed to admit this until I learned that some of the top UI/UX designers in the industry also depend on Keynote for a variety of design tasks.

Slack

Slack has become the central hub of our team’s daily communication, replacing much of what we previously communicated through email with simple communication through channels. We have channels for projects or clients, “departments” within our agency like #new-business, #marketing, #accounting, etc.

We especially like some of the integrations available within Slack. One of our favorites is Zoom conference calls. Whenever we are on a call and want to start a quick Zoom conference, we simply type /zoom within a channel and it opens a Zoom call and provides a link. Instant video conference. Trello is another useful integration. We connect certain Trello boards to a channel in Slack, providing instant communication when, for instance, a new card is created. More on Zoom and Trello below.

Teamwork

We love Teamwork as an incredibly capable project management system. As is quite common in the agency space, we’ve tried different tools and solutions over the years, some that seemed to lack innovation or give us everything we needed, some that were just too complex, But then we came across Teamwork PM. We love the interface, and it just ticks a lot of boxes for managing our virtual workflow. There is incredible versatility of its privacy settings, making it easy to grant clients and outside contractors access to only those aspects of a project that they need to see without unnecessary details of our inside team’s tasks and timelines.

Trello

While we don’t use Trello for project management, we find it indispensable for a variety of tasks including high level project planning, client reporting and accountability. We invite clients into these boards and use them as a basis for our weekly status meetings.

Zoom

We used to use GoToMeeting as our conferencing tool but discovered Zoom along the way, which allowed for more participants for less money per month. It’s super dependable for audio, video conferencing and screen sharing, which makes it our go-to app for almost any face to face collaboration meetings. The meeting recordings are conveniently stored for later reference and these have become invaluable for going back and taking notes on important meetings where note taking would have been distracting during the live conversation.

Our Tools are a Work in Progress

I’m sure we could (and we might!) do an annual update of tools we can’t live without, but this is where our agency is at currently. Hopefully this post has sparked an interest to check out a few tools that will help streamline a part of your business, and since we’re always on the lookout for ways to better our agency, feel free to comment with any must-have tools in your toolbox! We can’t wait to hear about them.

]]>http://fireworxdigital.com/12-agency-tools/feed/0http://fireworxdigital.com/12-agency-tools/7 Tips for an Effective Daily Workflowhttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/fireworxdigital/Vadp/~3/Ov0LioFiukY/
http://fireworxdigital.com/7-tips-for-an-effective-daily-workflow/#respondFri, 19 May 2017 20:46:57 +0000http://fireworxdigital.com/?p=338Something’s not working, and it’s affecting your whole work day.. Your tasks are taking longer than they should, but despite the extra time nothing’s quite up to your standards. There’s no need to give up on your efforts though. The problem is that you’re wasting time and money by using a bad daily workflow. In … Continue reading "7 Tips for an Effective Daily Workflow"

Your tasks are taking longer than they should, but despite the extra time nothing’s quite up to your standards. There’s no need to give up on your efforts though.

The problem is that you’re wasting time and money by using a bad daily workflow.

In my more than two years working with our remote team I’ve faced the many troubles that come with an inefficient workflow. I’m here today to tell you how to solve those problems by:

Waking up early

Ditching the morning coffee

Prioritizing your tasks

Taking regular breaks

Tracking your time

Automating what you can

Whether you’re brand new to content marketing or a veteran developer, your daily workflow is what gives you consistent productivity. It’s what lets you meet your deadlines and feel good about signing off after a hard day’s work.

It’s time to sort this out.

Wake up early

It’s pretty self-explanatory that the more hours in the day that you’re awake, the more time you’ll have to do what you want or have to. Many highly successful individuals such as Oprah Winfrey and Richard Branson wake up hours before they start work, but most don’t use it to power through an extra deadline or two.

The key is to use that extra time to do something other than work – relaxation is important if you want to be more productive during your work hours and leave your duties at sign off time.

Whether you spend time with your family, catch up on the news or do a little exercise (more on that in a bit), give yourself at least two hours to get into the swing of the day before truly starting work.

The first few times of doing this are always the hardest, but stick to it, and build a habit of waking up early. Once your habit’s set, it’ll be more difficult to break it than to keep going.

Eat breakfast (and drink water)

I’m as guilty as the next person for skipping breakfast, but as soon as I regularly started eating in the morning I found myself having the kickstart I needed to buckle down and produce some top notch work.

Get up, grab your breakfast of choice, and make sure that you drink a glass of water. Your body has just gone without water for around 7 hours – you’re going to need a top off if you don’t want a foggy brain.

A final note in terms of drinks that affect productivity– consider swapping out the coffee and tea for green tea. Blasphemy, I know (I love black coffee myself), but in terms of pure productivity green tea has the caffeine boost of coffee, but over a longer period and without the slump after it wears off.

Exercise

Along with all of the usual health benefits, exercise also increases your productivity. You’re essentially kickstarting your day with a rush of adrenaline, blasting away any remaining fogginess and upping your motivation to tackle the day ahead.

This is also another reason to get up earlier than usual – doing so gives you time to run, swim, climb, and generally break a sweat for a good half hour before sitting down to work.

If you’re stuck at a computer all day I’d particularly recommend checking out yoga. A quick morning session can really help to open up your posture and work the cricks out of your joints from the previous day’s work.

You might feel a little silly when just starting out, but it’s well worth the effort.

Prioritize your tasks the smart way

Hands-down one of the most effective ways I’ve found to boost my productivity by altering my daily workflow is by changing the way I prioritize tasks. Take a leaf out of Brian Tracy’s book and tackle the biggest, ugliest task you have as the first item of business.

Trying to clear your task list of the smaller items first thing doesn’t work. By the time you get to your main task, you’ll have spent a chunk of your most productive time on periphery tasks that don’t actually require attention.

Sort your task list into four categories:

Things you don’t want to do, but need to do.

Things you want to do and need to do.

Things you want to do, but don’t need to do.

Things you don’t want to do, and don’t need to do.

Once you have those lists, tackle them in roughly that order, starting with the biggest task that you don’t want to do but actually have to get done. Once you start chipping away, you’ll quickly find yourself settling into a groove, and when you’ve crossed it off your list you’ll feel much better than if you’d spent time clearing some of the peripheral clutter.

Take regular breaks to avoid burnout

You aren’t a robot, and you shouldn’t treat yourself as such. You need to be taking regular breaks to give yourself time to recover between sprints – this lets you keep up a steady pace for longer, and accomplish more every day.

Having said that, you don’t have to be incredibly strict with your breaks – if you’re following a particularly productive train of thought, it might be better to wait until you’ve finished typing to take a break instead of interrupting your flow and wasting a good stream of work.

The Pomodoro Technique is a good start for planning out your breaks, but doesn’t give the flexibility to adjust without wrecking your workflow. Instead of sticking to it exactly, I’d recommend using the “25 minutes of work, 5 minute break” framework as exactly that; a guideline. If you work for longer to stay in the zone, give yourself a sightly bigger break to balance things out.

Track your time to stop missing deadlines

Nothing beats procrastination like an impending deadline, but what do you do in the day-to-day situations where you don’t have a set time limit? Why, you track the time you’re spending on each task, of course.

Being aware of how much time you’re spending on your tasks is a fantastic way to keep yourself focused – especially if the rest of your team can see those stats too.

For example, Pomello integrates with your Trello board to leave up-to-date accounts of how much time you’ve spent on a task, and when you worked on it. In turn, if the rest of your team can access your board then you’re more likely to work on what you need to be doing and not dilly dally.

After all, you don’t want your teammates asking why “email our CEO to confirm the meeting” took you 7 hours.

Automate what you can

So far I’ve mostly given tips which can help improve not just your daily workflow, but your productivity in general. However, what if I told you that instead of increasing your efficiency, you could automatically take care of a chunk of your workload instead?

Services like Zapier and IFTTT let you automate your processes, meaning you can set an “Action” to occur if a “Trigger” is detected. For example, you could automatically save email attachments you receive to a Google Drive folder.

The easiest way to get started with automations is to use IFTTT’s mobile apps (such as Do Button and Do Note). These can be installed on Android and iOS devices, and perform simple actions (press the button to perform an action, create a note, etc).

Take back your day

Your daily workflow doesn’t have to be a drag – with these 7 tips, a little creativity, and a little customization to what works best for you, you can whip your daily workflow into shape and focus on the tasks that actually need doing.

This is a guest post written by Benjamin Brandall, a content creator at Process Street.

]]>http://fireworxdigital.com/7-tips-for-an-effective-daily-workflow/feed/0http://fireworxdigital.com/7-tips-for-an-effective-daily-workflow/5 Reasons Why Buyer Personas Inform Your Businesshttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/fireworxdigital/Vadp/~3/yeXj7xQQEJQ/
http://fireworxdigital.com/5-reasons-why-buyer-personas-inform-your-business/#respondTue, 10 Jan 2017 06:46:56 +0000http://fireworxdigital.com/?p=53You can’t be all things to all people. You’ve heard the old saying, but do you practice it when it comes to your business? Whether you are selling a product, or providing a service, there are going to be certain types of people that are more likely to buy from you than others. So focus … Continue reading "5 Reasons Why Buyer Personas Inform Your Business"

You’ve heard the old saying, but do you practice it when it comes to your business? Whether you are selling a product, or providing a service, there are going to be certain types of people that are more likely to buy from you than others. So focus on them. You want these ideal customers to think of you when they need what you provide, but are you thinking of them in the meantime?

Using proven research methods, including how you will segment your audience, then conducting in depth interviews (IDI’s) and persona interviews is the surest way to get accurate data for your buyer personas. Whether you are a B2B or B2C company, the takeaway is the same – taking the time to create and utilize buyer personas is the most powerful way for you to truly understand your customers – their needs, their pain points, and how you can make their lives better.

1. Know where your customers spend their time

…so you can be there, too. Hear us out, though. Please don’t bombard your customer with annoying sales pitches on every channel they utilize. You don’t even need a buyer persona to tell you that, because, nobody wants it.

But do let it inform things like what social media platforms your persona prefers, so you can be there to provide relevant, useful information through that avenue. By conducting research and talking to your current customers, you may find that they never even open their Instagram account, but have LinkedIn running in the background all day long. You can then put the appropriate resources into building your LinkedIn presence instead of just dipping your toe into all social platforms.

It can also inform the places that would be most beneficial to place ads, because they have a higher probability of visiting one website over another, or reading one magazine over another, etc.

2. Create content with a purpose

If you write it, they will come…said no one ever. Producing content for the sake of content will end up frustrating everyone involved. It also won’t give your marketing team a win in your company’s eyes.

On the other hand, having well-developed buyer personas will give you insight into exactly who you are writing to so they are more likely to resonate with your content when they read it. Remember all of those categories you focused on when developing your personas? Well, this is where they can really come into play.

What are your persona’s biggest pain points? You can now create a blog post for each pain point. Include solutions in these posts, particularly how your company can help. Have a new customer? Develop a series of emails to be sent that will help to onboard them and give them tips and tricks for how to be successful using your product or service. Maybe you’re aware of what would make your persona’s life easier. Create an infographic with 20 things they can do to achieve that goal.

Now let’s take that a step further, remembering that you also know where your target personas spend their time, as we discussed above. Imagine a targeted ad appearing in front of your persona leading them to an article that offers a solution to the exact kinds of problems they’ve been trying to address. This is where you go from just another company pumping out content, to a trusted partner helping them achieve their goals.

3. Build a website that works hard for you

Setting out to build or rebuild your company’s website can seem like an incredibly daunting task. There are countless agencies vying for your business, but clearly they are not all created equal. Not all agencies know how to properly use buyer personas to inform your website development.

A great, effective website will address the motivational drivers of each persona. In some selling situations, personas might be based on role. For example, marketing managers vs. marketing directors vs. business owners, each with different motivations for buying the same product. In another case, you may find personas driven more by attitude than role, ie strategic, financially or technically-driven buyers. The type of design, the images you choose, and your text and calls to action should specifically appeal to your personas.

4. Create the product your buyer wants

Done right, personas will inform more than just your marketing department. An area greatly affected by properly developed personas tis the product development department. Personas provide insights to your development team about who they are selling to, who they are creating for, who they are constantly working to attract and retain as loyal customers.

Just about every product in the world will continue to evolve over time, to become more useful and to stay relevant to its users. The personas you have already created, as well as having built a culture of communication with your customers, can be invaluable as your product development team looks to improve. You are able to provide them with clear wants and needs, as well as feedback on what might not be working or valuable to the user.

This is also a good time to mention that buyer personas not only come from talking to your customers. They are also the ones who didn’t end up buying from you. Their opinions can be some of the most important because you can save countless other prospects from slipping through the same cracks. Again, you can never be all things to all people, so for some it might just not be a good fit. But whether it was a hole in the sales process, or because your product didn’t have a certain critical feature, this type of information can serve your company well.

5. Bring in qualified leads

Speaking of the sales process, buyer personas can easily become your sales team’s best friend by increasing the amount of qualified leads versus unqualified leads coming across their desk.

If your personas are being used to their fullest potential, you might see a scenario like this:

The process of creating the buyer persona has informed product development, now making it the ideal solution for your prospect. You have written an ebook outlining the persistent problems facing the persona and how those problems can easily be solved. After creating and placing a targeted ad on your social platform of choice, your prospect downloads the ebook, resonates with the problem and is excited about the solution.

With all of the information that’s available with just a single click, most people do their research and read reviews ahead of time. They only really want to connect with a salesperson when they are ready to buy. So let’s look at the scenario above. As soon as the prospect decided to download, the power of person-driven marketing automation takes over. It nurtures your lead through the sales funnel, with content that engages, educates, and removes barriers in the buying process. By the time this person gets to a decision point, or talks to a salesperson, they are already informed about who you are and how you can help them. This makes the sales team’s job much easier…finally, marketing and sales REALLY working together!

Conclusion

We’d go so far as to say your marketing strategy should begin, first and foremost, with creating buyer personas and mapping the customer journey, using research and data tools. Buyer personas are all about getting into the minds of your customers, so you can truly understand them and their buying behaviors, and then serve them in the best way possible.

By taking the time to talk to your current or past customers, or those who chose not to become customers, you will be able to develop a strategy across every area of your business that can attract and engage a prospect through their buying decision, and then nurture that customer relationship long into the future.

]]>http://fireworxdigital.com/5-reasons-why-buyer-personas-inform-your-business/feed/0http://fireworxdigital.com/5-reasons-why-buyer-personas-inform-your-business/A Lesson in Realigning Your Focus, From Seth Godinhttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/fireworxdigital/Vadp/~3/aRVCzh8hu4E/
http://fireworxdigital.com/a-lesson-in-realigning-your-focus-from-seth-godin/#respondMon, 09 Jan 2017 06:03:31 +0000http://fireworxdigital.com/?p=132“What we see, depends mainly on what we look for.” – John Lubbock As we come to the end of another work week, we wanted to share a recent post on perception and where you’re choosing to place your focus, by the always brilliant, Seth Godin. While you read, think about your perceptions – of your personal … Continue reading "A Lesson in Realigning Your Focus, From Seth Godin"

As we come to the end of another work week, we wanted to share a recent post on perception and where you’re choosing to place your focus, by the always brilliant, Seth Godin. While you read, think about your perceptions – of your personal life, your work habits – and what you’ve been focusing on recently.

Depth of field

Focus is a choice.

The runner who is concentrating on how much his left toe hurts will be left in the dust by the runner who is focusing on winning.

Even if the winner’s toe hurts just as much.

Hurt, of course, is a matter of perception. Most of what we think about is.

We have a choice about where to aim the lens of our attention. We can relive past injustices, settle old grudges and nurse festering sores. We can imagine failure, build up its potential for destruction, calculate its odds. Or, we can imagine the generous outcomes we’re working on, feel gratitude for those that got us here and revel in the possibilities of what’s next.

The focus that comes automatically, our instinctual or cultural choice, that focus isn’t the only one that’s available. Of course it’s difficult to change it, which is why so few people manage to do so. But there’s no work that pays off better in the long run.

Your story is your story. But you don’t have to keep reminding yourself of your story, not if it doesn’t help you change it or the work you’re doing.

Implement It

We challenge you to take a few moments to reflect on the past week. Have you been aiming your lens of attention on perceived failures? Chances are, there is something much more worthy of your focus.

Monday is a new week (and a new month!). So take this time to shift your focus onto greater possibilities rather than missed opportunities, onto accomplishing your goals rather than the things that are holding you back.

]]>http://fireworxdigital.com/a-lesson-in-realigning-your-focus-from-seth-godin/feed/0http://fireworxdigital.com/a-lesson-in-realigning-your-focus-from-seth-godin/20 Productivity Tips to Get More Out of Your Dayhttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/fireworxdigital/Vadp/~3/Tm2yFsKj6Eo/
http://fireworxdigital.com/20-productivity-tips-more-out-of-your-day/#respondSat, 07 Jan 2017 06:49:30 +0000http://fireworxdigital.com/?p=142The clock is ticking. We all know that time can’t actually be stopped. But there are a ton of ways to use that time more wisely, and, sometimes, even make it feel like we are stealing more hours than our allotted 24 hour day. There are countless books, blogs, videos, articles and more geared towards … Continue reading "20 Productivity Tips to Get More Out of Your Day"

We all know that time can’t actually be stopped. But there are a ton of ways to use that time more wisely, and, sometimes, even make it feel like we are stealing more hours than our allotted 24 hour day.

There are countless books, blogs, videos, articles and more geared towards helping you live your best life, be your best you, overcome procrastination, form a routine, etc. So we decided to do some of the work for you, rounding up a list of some of the best productivity advice, so you can start each day more relaxed, and end each day feeling more accomplished than ever. Oh, and be sure to stick around for an added bonus at the end of this post!

1. Set Weekly Goals

We are committed to setting weekly goals each and every Monday morning during our production meeting. It can feel necessary to dive right into tasks at the beginning of the week, but starting without having a path laid out in front of you, while it might feel productive at first, will eventually lead to an aimless workflow.

Each week we set goals for what everyone wants to accomplish that week, so we can use it as a productivity checklist. At the end of each week, we go through each bullet point, talk about if we accomplished it and if not, why not, and we set the goals for the following week. It helps keep everyone in check and moving forward.

2. Schedule Everything

Have you ever caught yourself mindlessly clicking back and forth between open tabs in your browser, to an email, to your project management window and back again? Well, maybe it’s just us, but if we’re not working off of a carefully crafted to-do list, there are far too many distractions that will flood our mind and interrupt our work-flow, instead of allowing us to check off one item after the next.

If you want to get it done, put it in the calendar. If a task isn’t in my calendar, then it isn’t going to get done.

3. Time Blocking

Depending on the type of work you do, typical days will always look different. But for us, a day in the life at a digital agency must include billable time put in for a variety of clients. And when each client can tend to somehow all take ‘first priority’, it’s easy to jump from one task to another for several different clients. But come end of day, you’ve just accomplished a bunch of 30 minute increments, never allowing your brain to fully dive into any of them. Enter: time blocking.

I put everything in my calendar: meals, email, sleep. On busy days it’s easy to forget about all three of these things. Blocking out time guarantees that, at the very least, I’ll be aware of my ideal schedule when things get crazy. For bonus points, block out an hour each day for exercise.

4. Manage Distractions

Between social media alerts, emails, and drive-by visits, people can be distracted dozens or more times per day. Since one study found that people take 25 minutes to resume interrupted tasks (after dabbling, on average, in more than 2 other “work spheres” in the meantime), pushing distractions to predictable times can easily save hours. “Schedule time in your calendar for email/social media or when you will have interruptions,” suggests Murphy. “For example, professors have ‘office hours’ when they expect to be regularly interrupted by students. Is there a time of day when you are regularly interrupted? Plan for it.”

You might also consider more radical solutions. One study found that people spend 47% of their time on the internet procrastinating (indeed, you may be procrastinating now!) That’s why Bailey says that “Whenever I hunker down to work on something important, I almost always disconnect from the internet.”

5. Plan Your Day

Chris Bailey, author of The Productivity Project, spent a year test-driving productivity techniques on his blog, A Life of Productivity. He says that the best tactic he’s found for working intentionally is what he calls the Rule of 3. “At the start of the day, before you start working, you simply step back from your work and ask yourself: by the time the day is done, what three main things will I want to have accomplished?” Figuring out what’s most important keeps you from losing hours as you blindly respond to whatever comes in. It also encourages investing time in high-yield activities such as mentoring new employees.

By thinking through your days, you can also match the right kind of activity to the right time. Deep focused work is best done when you have a lot of energy. “People who are high achievers are ruthless schedulers,” says Wendy Murphy, an assistant professor at Babson College who teaches organizational behavior and management. “When are you most able to focus? Schedule the type of work you need to do during the times you have the most energy to do it.”

6. Wake Up At The Same Time

It’s tempting to sleep in on the weekend to catch up on your sleep. Though it feels good temporarily, having an inconsistent wake-up time disturbs your circadian rhythm. Your body cycles through an elaborate series of sleep phases in order for you to wake up rested and refreshed. One of these phases involves preparing your mind to be awake and alert, which is why people often wake up just before their alarm clock goes off (the brain is trained and ready). When you sleep past your regular wake-up time on the weekend, you end up feeling groggy and tired. This isn’t just disruptive to your day off, it also makes you less productive on Monday because your brain isn’t ready to wake up at your regular time. If you need to catch up on sleep, just go to bed earlier.

7. Don’t Rush in The Morning

We all have those mornings where you’re rushing your morning routine and barely have time to brush your teeth before running out the door to make it to the office on time. It’s when the morning rush becomes a habit that there can be negative consequences to your sense of well being and your overall productivity.

When you start off your day in a frenzied state of mind, you’re not giving your brain any time to decompress, reset, and prepare for the day. Instead, you’re pumping it with adrenaline first thing in the morning, which can cause you to crash later on.

8. Designate Mornings as ‘Me’ Time

It can be difficult to get time to yourself on the weekends, especially if you have family. Finding a way to engage in an activity you’re passionate about first thing in the morning can pay massive dividends in happiness and cleanliness of mind. It’s also a great way to perfect your circadian rhythm by forcing yourself to wake up at the same time you do on weekdays. Your mind achieves peak performance two-to-four hours after you wake up, so get up early to do something physical, and then sit down and engage in something mental while your mind is at its peak.

9. Don’t Tackle the Easy Stuff First

It can be very tempting to get all the easy tasks out of the way first before tackling the tough stuff. This is especially true when you’re dreading that challenging task. You push it further and further down your to-do list … until you’ve left it untouched for days or even weeks.

But tackling the most difficult tasks on your to-do list early on in the day is actually better for your overall productivity. Researchers have found that willpower is a finite resource that steadily decreases throughout the day, according to the book The Willpower Instinct. So your brain is much better at handling the hardest tasks at the beginning of the day when you’re more focused.

Mornings also tend to lend fewer distractions, making it easier for you to get things done. My colleague James Gilbert suggests that folks “take advantage of morning hours to crank through meaty projects without distractions, and save any calls or virtual meetings for the afternoon.”

When you start time blocking and scheduling everything, this becomes easier to do. Well, maybe the task itself isn’t easier. But getting your head in the right space to be able to take the task on will be. You’ve set aside the time, and you can use that as an excuse to ignore any possible interruptions that might try to make their way in.

10. Stop Multitasking

Multitasking can seem inevitable in our modern, ever-connected lifestyles. But research shows it can make us less effective, increase mistakes and stress, and costs the global economy an estimated $450 billion every year.

Think you’re an exception? Consider this: Only 2% of the population is capable of effectively multitasking. For the other 98%, all it does is cause us to be 40% less productive and make 50% more mistakes than non-multitaskers.

11. Don’t Work Through Lunch

Eating at your desk doesn’t just make you antisocial. According to NPR, it’s also “bad for thinking, bad for creativity, bad for productivity, [and] bad for your body.” Sadly, though, only one in five people actually leave their desks or the office for a lunch break.

To be fair, if you’re among those people who take lunch at your desk instead of taking a break, it may not be your fault. Perhaps it’s not built into your office culture, or maybe you have a deadline that’s pressuring you to squeeze every waking moment out of your day.

But research shows taking the midday break can be mentally rejuvenating — and, in many ways, more productive than plugging away at your desk between mouthfuls. The best way to take a lunch break is to remove yourself from your desk or workspace and eat somewhere else — like a cafeteria, restaurant, or public park.

12. Power Naps

One of the biggest perks of working for yourself is not having to worry about face time. You’re actions are responsible for the success or failure of your company — not when you show up or leave work or how long your lunch break is (admittedly, right now these are really early, really late, and nonexistent, respectively). Every so often I dabble in 15 min power naps in the late afternoons, and wake up so much more productive than I could have been otherwise.

13. Get Your Meetings Done More Quickly

One of my favorite tricks is to conduct most of my meetings standing up. I find it to be a much quicker way of getting down to business, making a decision, and sealing the deal. When given the opportunity, I often like to take things a step further–literally, with a walking meeting.

For us, while walking or standing meetings aren’t always a possibility, we never start a meeting without creating an agenda first. We use Do.com as an easy way to add agenda topics with sub-items, and it is easily shared with all participants. While we can’t say that a meeting never goes off topic, it’s definitely helpful for us all.

14. Disconnect

Disconnecting is the most important weekend strategy on this list, because if you can’t find a way to remove yourself electronically from your work Friday evening through Monday morning, then you’ve never really left work.

Making yourself available to your work 24/7 exposes you to a constant barrage of stressors that prevent you from refocusing and recharging. If taking the entire weekend off handling work e-mails and calls isn’t realistic, try designating specific times on Saturday and Sunday for checking e-mails and responding to voicemails. For example, check your messages on Saturday afternoon while your kids are getting a haircut and on Sunday evenings after dinner. Scheduling short blocks of time will alleviate stress without sacrificing availability.

15. Stop Black Hole Browsing

You know the feeling when you search for something on the internet, then click on a “related article” or other link … and before you know it, you’ve charted the entire Russian Revolution?

Yeah … I’ll be the first to admit it: I do this a lot. It’s a dangerous side effect of having a job that requires internet research. It’s one thing to mindlessly browse the web outside of work or when you’re on a break. (In fact, I have a great list of the best sites for wasting time on the internet for times like those.) But it’s another entirely when you’re supposed to be doing actual work.

That’s what Tousley likes to call “black hole browsing,” and it’s become one of the most productivity-sucking psychological addictions out there.

16. Social Media

The whole “easily distracted” thing goes for social media notifications, too. Turns out we actually have a psychological urge to check for social media notifications, which makes it hard to check our News Feeds “just this once” — and usually ends up in a lot of mindless browsing.

My colleague Alec Biedrzycki solves this problem by removing all social networks from his toolbar bookmarks. “Even if I don’t mean to browse them, some uncontrollable impulse subconsciously clicks on them when I experience downtime,” he says. “You can get sucked in without knowing it (or even intending to), so eliminating the gateway to those networks keeps me on track.”

Another useful tip is using social media management software for automation capabilities. While this can’t cure the addiction to deliberately checking, scrolling and posting, it can take away some of the perceived need to go on social media multiple times a day because your updates are still being published. Your accounts cannot be fully automated if you want to appropriately and genuinely engage your audience. But you can still post multiple times per day while not having to physically log on each time.

17. Stop Checking Emails As They Come In

Email is supposed to help us do our work, not distract us from our work. So why does it always feel like a productivity suck?

In an effort to stay on top of a constantly overflowing inbox, it can be tempting to check and respond to every email as soon as it comes in. Receiving email notifications in real time certainly doesn’t help. But constantly switching tasks between work and email can really hurt your productivity.

18. Pursue a Passion

You might be surprised what happens when you pursue something you’re passionate about on weekends. Indulging your passions is a great way to escape stress and to open your mind to new ways of thinking. Things like playing music, reading, writing, painting, or even playing catch with your kids can help stimulate different modes of thought that can reap huge dividends over the coming week.

19. Take a 30 Day Challenge

Being stuck in a rut can lead to decreased productivity. Matt Cutts argues in his TED Talk that taking a relatively short, doable 30 Day Challenge can help in some pretty big ways. You can add a new habit, or subtract a bad one, and see where it takes you even after the 30 days are done.

A few takeaways he found was that time became much more memorable, his self confidence grew, and he was able to do things he assumed he never could.

Watch the video, and think of what you could try for your 30 Day Challenge!

20. Listen, Really Listen

One of the sad consequences of being constantly distracted is the epidemic of only half paying attention — and thinking that’s OK. You might think that any time someone else is talking and you’re not, that means you’re listening. But, as my colleague Andrew Quinn wrote in his post on bad conversational habits, it doesn’t. “The real question is who are you listening to when [someone else] is talking,” he wrote. “I’m willing to bet a good portion of the time, you’re actually listening to the voice in your head.”

That, or you’re reading that email that just came in. Or checking to see why your phone buzzed. When you’re in a meeting, how much can you really be paying attention when your laptop is open?

Not only can not listening carefully cost you relationships, it can also cost you in the time it takes to make up for whatever information you missed. Becoming an active listener is a critical part of becoming more emotionally intelligent. This mean really, truly paying attention to what people are saying — and it’s a skill that’ll set you apart in both your professional and personal life.

BONUS Infographic!

We’ve covered the concept of a few of these tips throughout the list above, but for all you visual learners out there, here’s a beautifully designed infographic created by Hubspot that gives even more great productivity tips!

]]>http://fireworxdigital.com/20-productivity-tips-more-out-of-your-day/feed/0http://fireworxdigital.com/20-productivity-tips-more-out-of-your-day/Can a Gum Wrapper Teach Us About Great Content Marketing?http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/fireworxdigital/Vadp/~3/iaGIP6297P8/
http://fireworxdigital.com/gum-wrapper-content-marketing/#respondSat, 07 Jan 2017 03:25:17 +0000http://fireworxdigital.com/?p=155The hero? An ordinary gum wrapper. How many times have you heard that storyline before? Not many, I’d guess. I’m a sucker for a good story. Who isn’t, really? But then add a touching song to that story, and play it out in living color through video, and you’ve got the best case scenario for … Continue reading "Can a Gum Wrapper Teach Us About Great Content Marketing?"

How many times have you heard that storyline before? Not many, I’d guess.

I’m a sucker for a good story. Who isn’t, really? But then add a touching song to that story, and play it out in living color through video, and you’ve got the best case scenario for sparking emotion from their audience. And Wrigley’s Extra gum ad portraying Sara and Juan’s budding romance is the perfect example of nailing this trifecta right on the head.

The Story

The actors in this story were amazing. They were real, genuine people, who connected with the audience on so many levels. American Idol singer Haley Reinhart’s sultry voice sings Elvis Presley’s “Can’t Help Falling in Love”, with a beautifully filmed sequence of events as the couple’s love story evolves. Again, they nailed it.

But, back to my my initial point. The brilliance of this piece of content and the star of the show was a lowly gum wrapper.

Whereas just about every gum ad since the beginning of time uses the ‘first kiss’ or at least the ‘our-faces-are-really-close-good-thing-we-have-gum’ scenarios, Wrigley’s takes a chance on letting this item, which is typically just thrown away, shine.

They’ve dared the audience to, yes, still grab a stick of Extra right before your first kiss, but to also think about chewing gum during just about any other life moment as well:

first interactions

a picnic in the park

arguments

airport departures

even long distance communication (basically the opposite of the gum ad status-quo)

The Proposal

I absolutely loved the simple gum wrapper drawings that chronicle the couple’s relationship, all framed and leading to the culmination in Juan’s proposal down on one knee.

Chicago-based advertising agency Energy BBDO produced the video that has amassed 80 million plus views on Facebook. That certainly qualifies it as effective content marketing! And while we might not all become avid gum wrapper artists, we as marketers should always be thinking of how we can better tell a story.

The Conclusion

So whether it’s through video, drawing on emotion, or by focusing on a completely different aspect of your product you’ve never thought of before, these are the kinds of stories we should be telling in our content marketing. They’re what create memorable experiences for your audience, who is probably chewing a stick of Wrigley’s as we speak.